Into the Middle Kingdom- Days 1 through 4

Greetings from China!  I am finally able to get a post out.  Slow internet access or just time management issues during this fast-paced trip have made things a little challenging until now.  Anyway, I am in Harbin tonight finishing day 6 of the trip, but this post will sample from the first four days, all in Beijing.

I will put individual comments on each photo's caption, so please look to those.  Overall assessment of Beijing in two words- Income Disparity.  Everyone who has been to Beijing says it, and after seeing it firsthand I must must echo it; Beijing has amazing appearances of glamor and success but the veneer is quite thin.  Still and all, I believe it can be compared to countries like the United States or Japan only in the aspects that it wishes to; I guess I mean in ways like GDP and modernization of various industries and lifestyles.  

However, in so many other ways, China is completely different from the west and chooses to remain that way, so it hard for me now to compare things like society values and cultural norms, but instead to just roll through it for the ICT experience.  And there have been plenty of "ICT moments" so far!

Anyway, don't want to make this one too long.  Please review the captions for a fuller picture.  Next post will wrap up the last day in Beijing and show the two days in Harbin, way up north in Manchuria.  Thanks for reading, catch you later!

Haneda Airport International Terminal in Tokyo, in the Edo era mall there.  Very cool, very clean, very busy.  Nice way to exit the country!

Me and travel partner Capt Jamey Isaacs on a Beijing subway.  The fare is always 2 yuan anywhere you want to go.  That's 30 cents, by the way.  Clean system, always crowded, but nothing new on Asian trains!

Me and Jamey at Temple of Heaven Park.  Very nice city park, mostly retirees in there (they get in for free) but also some tourists.  Beautiful weather that day.

One of three huge shopping centers we visited in one day.  This one is Yashow, about seven stories.  Combat shopping at its finest; everything is negotiable and some real deals can be made in there.  Some of the vendors get very aggressive in trying to get you in their stalls and make a sale.  Just business, baby, can't take it personal!

The Great Wall from the Badaling site.  Definitely the most popular sites for tourists, mostly because it is the closest big one.  Crammed on the wall we walked, but amazing thing to see.

Front of the Military Museum, which mostly focuses on the People's Liberation Army but also has exhibits from ancient China.  Very clean, very large, very skewered histories to read.

In that booth you can see two nice young ladies who are guards for a section of  the weapons displays, and yes they were both sound asleep.  When I took this picture, another guard came up, said nothing to me, but next time I looked the gals were awake and going about their duties smartly, though what those duties were escaped me.

Interesting display here.  This is the number of casualties sustained in the War of American Aggression in Korea.  The number must be read as 1.8 million people and change, and then the bird designs on either side list the battle sites and numbers of casualties of each.

Night Market in the Wanfujing shopping district.  Look close at the impressive array of snacks available. 

National Theater where the Shaolin Monks Kung Fu show runs every night.  Super impressive, was not allowed to take pics of the show, sorry.

Entrance way to a very normal Beijing family courtyard home in of the hutong, or local neighborhood, areas.  Several related families will live in there.  Outside the quad area, where I am taking the picture, are the local streets where the families will often have their shops.  This is very common site in central Beijing; the more affluent live on the peripheries.

Just add to add this pic of a hand bag available in a hutong shop.  Had to pay the shopkeeper 10 yuan to take the pic, but just about everything is negotiable!  Who says the Chinese don't embrace sarcasm? 

One more shot of an impoverished city center district.  What you can't see is that there are modern corporate buildings just four blocks to the left of this area.  We are here going to the reputed best roast duck restaurant in the city, and it was really excellent, with authentic atmosphere!

One face of gambling in Japan...the pachinko parlor

Didn't plan to, but I had to get this photo and video up before the China reports begin.  Every country has its gambling culture, and Japan's is perhaps not so much different from many others.  Still, I continue to be amazed at scenes like this:

This is a pachinko and slot machine parlor, called Oriental Passage, which is right around the corner  from my language school.  This picture was taken at 0920 Tuesday, and yes if you look to the left of the building that is indeed a line of about 15 people waiting to get in to start their day off right.

And then there is the actual inside of the place.  Now, I like noise as much as the next guy, but wow...

So there is just a small snippet of gambling life in Japan, in a smallish area of town, not even real downtown Tokyo.


I am sure there is plenty more to see in China, so thanks for tuning in and please come back again for more!

Some quick images from this week

A good week.  I added another 10 teas to my growing album, so be sure to check out the small slide show on the right margin of the blog.


Had a full set of language classes, and that meant getting to also stroll around Kichijoji a bit.  Very lovely park called Inokashira, here's a shot of some artists working on capturing a scene.

Also found a good noodle shop around the corner, here is a lady cutting up the freshly made pasta.

Finally, a brief video giving a glimpse of daily life at Shinjuku Station, the world's busiest train station.  That fact is hard to grasp when you are in there because the structure as very low ceilings and is very compartmentalized.  Still, this is normal weekday traffic about 90 minutes after the rush hour period, and it is still crazy.

To wrap up, it is less than a week until I fly to China.  Everything is in order, time to kick off this ICT with a bang, an 18-day cross country trip, from the northeast of Manchuria to the southern tip of Hong Kong.  Providing I find wifi along the way, I plan to chronicle as I go.  

That's it for now!  じゃまたね。

Settled in, ready to roll

Well, it took almost four weeks to get past the initial settling-in phase. Almost three weeks at the Yokota Air Base Kanto Lodge and then I and my family have been in our house since 27 Jan.  Overall, a very smooth transition, thanks to an awesome housing agent and a squad of hard chargers at Henderson Hall, HQMC.

So, pictures in this post include the car, the house, and the language school where I am now enrolled in Kichijoji-shi, I start classes Tuesday 8 Feb.  We live in Kokubunji-shi, pretty much midway between my school to the east and Yokota Air Base to the west, in what can be considered more suburban/rural Tokyo prefecture.  For a full gallery of the house, look me up on facebook.


















The kanji for my town is 国分寺, which is actually the name of a large quite well-known Shinto shrine in the city center, but also it refers to a time in the Nara era of Japan when shrines were supported and controlled by the state.  Perhaps a corollary of this is the fact that there are many many shrines here in this town.  In this post is also a pic of the medium-sized shrine that is two plots east of my house, and then a pic I just had to share of a shrine that is not actually a 7-11, though perhaps the image is misleading.

Even as I work to settle my family and establish a routine, I am simultaneously planning my first In Country Training trip, and that trip is to China for 18 days beginning 17 Feb.  So there is little chance of routine right away, but such is the general ICT experience , I am beginning to see.  Very exciting and challenging.


So very likely my next posts will be from on the road in China.  Thanks for reading and please feel free to comment or correspond with me at any time!